Jared Morgenstern, Facebook's product manager for games and credits, has announced that the Facebook Gift Shop will be closed on 1st August. Gifts that you have received will, however, be continue to be visible in your Wall. Third party gift applications like Birthday Cards, Hallmark Social Calendar etc. will not be affected and users can continue using them.

Morgenstern said that they are closing the Goft Shop to focus on features which more people use like Photos, News Feed, games, wall etc. This is what he wrote:

Closing the Gift Shop may disappoint many of the people who have given millions of gifts, but we made the decision after careful thought about where we need to focus our product development efforts. We'll be able to focus more on improving and enhancing products and features that people use every day, such as Photos, News Feed, Inbox, games, comments, the "Like" button and the Wall.

It is estimated that the Gift Shop earns Facebook a revenue of about $100Million. If they are willing to let go of such a revenue source, I am sure they have a very good reason and they are planning something big.